Fractal Softworks Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

News:

Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

Pages: 1 ... 3 4 [5] 6

Author Topic: A Professional Critique Of Story Points  (Read 11454 times)

Megas

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 12118
    • View Profile
Re: A Professional Critique Of Story Points
« Reply #60 on: May 11, 2021, 08:56:30 AM »

The biggest sink of story points by far is colony improvements and getting the historian to use dark magic to conjure a colony item somewhere in space.  Eventually, their costs double progressively to ludicrous extremes, dwarfing everything else, even s-mods for the fleet (which also eat a lot compared to other non-colony uses, except maybe frequent respecs with elite skills).

As long as colony-related powerups (improvements, historian) have an insatiable appetite for story points, their primary role will be as Vespene Gas or the second rarer currency other than gold or space credits.

And as long as story points serve as currency #2, they should be acquired much like money, but a bit harder.  Admittedly, it greatly devalues story points as story tools and as rewards for doing story things (like finishing up the gate quest).

Honestly, I kind of want many of the powerups that require story points to buy to use credits instead if it makes sense.  Stuff like colony improvements and s-mods should use credits, not story points.  (Or maybe one story point plus lots of money.)
« Last Edit: May 11, 2021, 09:04:56 AM by Megas »
Logged

ModdedLaharl

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 37
    • View Profile
Re: A Professional Critique Of Story Points
« Reply #61 on: May 11, 2021, 10:13:32 AM »

Even if we do choose to go further with the idea of RPG elements, I'd argue that ultimately story points are still an unnecessary and very washed-out placeholder for much more engaging ideas. In terms of interpersonal stuff, even if you didn't put a second's worth of more work into it, the reputation system that already exists... Is there, and frankly could use being more useful other than on a faction level.

This isn't a tabletop, nor does it resemble one. And even in tabletops, 'GM points' are something I more tolerate than want. If I do something heroic, my reward should be being a hero. If the GM really wants to award me, maybe give me a feat (read: skill), more experience points, or maybe there was a treasure involved behind the nasty monster / from the grateful civilians. That's solid. That's tangible, real, immersive, and allows me to feel like 'Yes, I earned this, and I can't wait to use it'.

Fighting an IBB fleet is hard, long, and often requires me to think on my feet to adjust my strategy and come out alive. My reward, though, is tangible; here's a not-insignificant amount of credits (Yes these are a bit easy right now; I would say make them less easy so I actually want to do trading and bounties and be selective about colonies, and also ships are way too cheap), here's some reputation, and here's a big salvage pile full of some probably nice ships and also a unique one, have fun with that mate.

That's the crux of this issue that I don't think there's a lot of defense for. Story points are far too easy, far too disconnected, essentially meaningless, and either let you cheat the game in ways where there were obviously better options, or they artificially prevent you from doing things that have no business having a magic paywall.
Logged

Undead

  • Lieutenant
  • **
  • Posts: 89
    • View Profile
Re: A Professional Critique Of Story Points
« Reply #62 on: May 11, 2021, 10:17:32 AM »

Regarding the topic starter post - sometimes less is more. I wish the author to be more concise. And using fancy colors to, supposedly, make your argument stronger is some next level infantilism.

Regarding story points - I think they are fine. I havent seen no game using a similar mechanic, and inventing something new in gaming industry is an achievement of its own. SP are an interesting addition to the game, that is not mandatory - if you dont like it, dont use it. Some people dont like trading, some people dont like raiding, and thats okay. Just enjoy the game the way you want.
Logged

ModdedLaharl

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 37
    • View Profile
Re: A Professional Critique Of Story Points
« Reply #63 on: May 11, 2021, 10:28:04 AM »

Regarding the topic starter post - sometimes less is more. I wish the author to be more concise. And using fancy colors to, supposedly, make your argument stronger is some next level infantilism.

Regarding story points - I think they are fine. I havent seen no game using a similar mechanic, and inventing something new in gaming industry is an achievement of its own. SP are an interesting addition to the game, that is not mandatory - if you dont like it, dont use it. Some people dont like trading, some people dont like raiding, and thats okay. Just enjoy the game the way you want.

I could've made a short post. But I don't think it'd have been worth my time or offered enough detail for it to be clear what I think, why, and what I think should be done. I think it would have been either ignored, misunderstood, or devolved into a twenty-page argument because I didn't make everything clear from the outset. I used colors and text effects to ease readability and provide emphasis, not because it makes my argument stronger. Saying it's infantile of me... Is pretty infantile.

Furthermore, as has already been thoroughly established in this thread, story points are not even slightly new to games. Perhaps to this genre of games it might be uncommon, but Starsector's genre is a little blurry. Additionally, something being new does not mean it is good, and that's the point of this post; Story Points are currently implemented to be an integral system, not something that can be ignored, and given the weaknesses they have I felt it was worth my time to write out this whole long essay about what I believe the problems are with that. In excessive detail and with examples of where every instance could be fixed.
Logged

Chaos Blade

  • Lieutenant
  • **
  • Posts: 74
    • View Profile
Re: A Professional Critique Of Story Points
« Reply #64 on: May 11, 2021, 10:54:26 AM »

Even if we do choose to go further with the idea of RPG elements, I'd argue that ultimately story points are still an unnecessary and very washed-out placeholder for much more engaging ideas. In terms of interpersonal stuff, even if you didn't put a second's worth of more work into it, the reputation system that already exists... Is there, and frankly could use being more useful other than on a faction level.

This isn't a tabletop, nor does it resemble one. And even in tabletops, 'GM points' are something I more tolerate than want. If I do something heroic, my reward should be being a hero. If the GM really wants to award me, maybe give me a feat (read: skill), more experience points, or maybe there was a treasure involved behind the nasty monster / from the grateful civilians. That's solid. That's tangible, real, immersive, and allows me to feel like 'Yes, I earned this, and I can't wait to use it'.

Fighting an IBB fleet is hard, long, and often requires me to think on my feet to adjust my strategy and come out alive. My reward, though, is tangible; here's a not-insignificant amount of credits (Yes these are a bit easy right now; I would say make them less easy so I actually want to do trading and bounties and be selective about colonies, and also ships are way too cheap), here's some reputation, and here's a big salvage pile full of some probably nice ships and also a unique one, have fun with that mate.

That's the crux of this issue that I don't think there's a lot of defense for. Story points are far too easy, far too disconnected, essentially meaningless, and either let you cheat the game in ways where there were obviously better options, or they artificially prevent you from doing things that have no business having a magic paywall.

I fully agree, the Story points are too easy to get and serve as gatekeeper to too many things that shouldn't.
Specially not where there could be better ways to gatekeep those options, be some skill check, an actuall skill check, or reputation based or simple logic.
But I do recall something of Alex logic for the SP was based on him not wanting RNGs or checks? or something like that, which felt a bit of a let down.
Yes, people don't like RNGs, most of the time, specially when the dice gods find you wanting, so I can understand why Alex would go this way, somewhat
But honestly I do agree SP are easy to get and do entirely too much out of nothing and while some of that could be worked around or rengieered or adjusted, the big issue is that SPs are acquired by gaining EXP, they are meant to be part of the normal game cylce.
Which is why I mentioned making them a side objective or maybe the result of willingly going against the odds, much like moxie/spunk whatever systems that the points aren't earned by the regular gameplay system.

Yes, they are GM points and, yes, they really won't work very well in a pc game, but the idea behind them of having the player needing to go out of their way, of doing something "extra" or more difficult, which is something that should work better, if Alex is married to the SP idea. and again, having effects that are far tamer than the current implementation, like making sure my buddy steve is manning the desk at the custom booth in Jangla so he can look the other way due to the favor he owns me.


I hope he won't be, trading favors, using reputation or what not sounds far more engaging and organic than just using my accumulated mana points for my spellwork.
Logged

ModdedLaharl

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 37
    • View Profile
Re: A Professional Critique Of Story Points
« Reply #65 on: May 11, 2021, 11:02:38 AM »

See, I agree with you, it should be something the player goes out of their way for. But if we're already doing that, why shouldn't the reward be something that actually has to do with the game world, something that already makes sense in context, already has meaning to the systems and mechanics you've been learning, has some actual weight?

D'you know what convinces me to go out of my way in Sandbox/RPGs like Skyrim? Shiny treasures, awesome fights, hidden questlines, or hell, maybe just a really really pretty view. In Starbound, I do it to find new materials for my lab and seek out new weapons. In Terraria, I do it to find the treasures I need to hit the next goalpost or just for the sake of exploring the world. In 7 Days To Die, I do it to survive and get every advantage I can. In Rimworld (Yes, very different, but some concepts are shared) I do it to acquire things that my colony doesn't have access to or to go explore something I heard about.

And in Starsector, I do it for the joy of exploration, to find blueprints that I will immediately sell to pirates, to find new planets or ships or treasures, to find the neat hidden quests and unholy fights that await me in the depths of space, and to experience whatever organic stuff happens on the way, which is always one of my favorite parts; stuff that can just happen because of how organically and well simulated the world is. Again, Skyrim makes a good case. ...Once you've modded all the bugs and stupid out, that is.

The only reason I would ever go out of my way for something intangible is for bragging rights; if it's some magic token put in purely as a reward for dedicated players, and if you find them all you get an achievement called cheesecake or something. A nod from the dev to me that they appreciate how much I'm putting into their game. Sure, it's a little unimmersive, but as long as it doesn't affect the actual game then it's just kind of nice and I can enjoy it and move on.
« Last Edit: May 11, 2021, 11:05:05 AM by ModdedLaharl »
Logged

Chaos Blade

  • Lieutenant
  • **
  • Posts: 74
    • View Profile
Re: A Professional Critique Of Story Points
« Reply #66 on: May 11, 2021, 11:21:36 AM »

no arguments there.
I am big on organic limitations in games.
I Hate Paradox Mana, I dislike artificial limitations that seem to be there because "game balance" or what not
It speaks to me that the devs feel the need to put arbitrary limits on a game because they want it played some way.

It is the reason I gave up on Firaxis' XCOM, you could have one troop transport (named skyranger for nostalgia reasons) that had four slots and then magically could get six.
But you had one skyranger, and yet there was no reason why you had one skyranger (except the need from the devs to try and force you to pick one of three missions to handle the disaster of a geoscape they built) but you could have fighters by the bucket load, even an alien tech fighter, same with the radar sets, or satellites that could cover a country down to the borders (space magic amrite?), sorry for the ramble, that game annoyed me to no end, and for all the nice tactical combat the whole strat layer left me with a bitter taste and more than an annoyance

Logged

ModdedLaharl

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 37
    • View Profile
Re: A Professional Critique Of Story Points
« Reply #67 on: May 11, 2021, 11:25:09 AM »

Admittedly I love XCOM to death, but the things you mentioned are indeed things I personally didn't care for. I much prefer the XCOM2 Long War mod, which essentially removes the things you mentioned and gives the strategy layer more depth. I'm willing to be forgiving of the first XCOM since the strategy layer was kind of false, and really only served as an interface between base time and tactical missions.
Logged

Chaos Blade

  • Lieutenant
  • **
  • Posts: 74
    • View Profile
Re: A Professional Critique Of Story Points
« Reply #68 on: May 11, 2021, 11:46:52 AM »

Admittedly I love XCOM to death, but the things you mentioned are indeed things I personally didn't care for. I much prefer the XCOM2 Long War mod, which essentially removes the things you mentioned and gives the strategy layer more depth. I'm willing to be forgiving of the first XCOM since the strategy layer was kind of false, and really only served as an interface between base time and tactical missions.

I probably need to give XCOM2 another chance some time, long war and war of the chosen
But Vanilla hadn't impressed me and between the weird chuni commander fetishization, the doom clock and echoes of the nucom goescape in the new game it was, I finished, there done, now darken my door nevermore.
Running a faceless multinational spec ops war with casualties that make the Somme feel like "a good day" was what I wanted. not the artificially reduced teams or the fake AI (pod spawn in the tactical, which is far, far less forgiving than some of the strat issues, after all if you are trying to do tactical your bread and butter, it needs to be flawless, not using a cheap cinematic to hide general AI incompetence)
But, again, as you said, Longwar did fix a lot of those issues, so it stands to reason longwar for two did the same, hopefully without going full on masochistic, but...
Logged

Badger

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 34
    • View Profile
Re: A Professional Critique Of Story Points
« Reply #69 on: May 11, 2021, 02:17:43 PM »

Just from a new player's perspective I largely agree with OP.

I started playing Starsector a week ago and love the game but it's way too easy and 'Storypoints' are almost insulting to the player, just giving you the ability to bypass any screwup for basically no cost. It's like 'Hey, you're an idiot but that's ok, we have you covered with these cheat-points!'. It's completely immersion-breaking and undermines the mechanics that are there removing any necessity to pay attention or think.

Re difficulty in general I was excited to try the game because it looked hard and I like the idea of trying to scrape a living in a hostile environment and slowly work up. But I soon found out that you can't die, there are big shiny ships everywhere just floating around waiting for you to put crew on, you get paid hefty sums for doing literally nothing and truly ludicrous income from building your own space empire in a couple of years, etc. etc. The 'story points' are just another dose of this painful lack of difficulty, which is strange for a game of this kind. It's like it's trying to cater to a general audience. Let's face it, nobody is going to play this game except nerds  ;D

Hope the design direction will go more towards assuming the player isn't a 10 year old. Great game, lot of potential.

@ The x-com conversation you guys should try Xenonauts if you haven't already, superior imo, especially with mods - X-Division is great.
« Last Edit: May 11, 2021, 02:20:35 PM by Badger »
Logged

Hiruma Kai

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 878
    • View Profile
Re: A Professional Critique Of Story Points
« Reply #70 on: May 11, 2021, 05:16:50 PM »

Re difficulty in general I was excited to try the game because it looked hard and I like the idea of trying to scrape a living in a hostile environment and slowly work up. But I soon found out that you can't die, there are big shiny ships everywhere just floating around waiting for you to put crew on, you get paid hefty sums for doing literally nothing and truly ludicrous income from building your own space empire in a couple of years, etc. etc. The 'story points' are just another dose of this painful lack of difficulty, which is strange for a game of this kind. It's like it's trying to cater to a general audience. Let's face it, nobody is going to play this game except nerds  ;D

Unfortunately, as with any game, one difficulty doesn't really fit all players.  As it is, Starsector only has two immediately accessible difficulties, easy and normal.  Alex has expressed the opinion that he'd rather see in game switches be available to make the game easier or harder as the player desires.  Things like story points or taking commissions with factions.

I'll note many people told Alex in RC9 the payouts for missions were too low, so Alex boosted them in RC10.  Players were still told him they were too low, so they were boosted in RC14 as well.  So despite your claim, there are people on these forums stating the opposite in terms of difficulty.

On the bright side, Starsector is highly configurable and moddable.  If I'm not experimenting, I'll generally run a spacer start plus iron man.  If you're not aware,  Spacer eliminates the starting income, and replaces it with a debt payed monthly that scales with character level.  It can turned on using a text editor to modify:

Starector/starsectore-core/data/config/settings.json

Change line 216 (at least in my config file):
   "enableSpacerStart":false,
to
   "enableSpacerStart":true,

There are a number of settings in there that can also be changed to make things easier or harder, but is a bit much to go through here.  As a quick example though, one could change     

"storyPointsPerLevel":4,
to
"storyPointsPerLevel":1,

There are also mods aimed specifically at increasing difficulty, such as Ruthless sector, found in the mod section of the forums.

I agree, once you've hit well developed colonies, credits become a non-issue.  Alex I believe is still planning out what the end game enemy or enemies will be that require such vast wealth.  Its one of the reasons colony growth was tuned lower this release.  Although Nexerlin (essentially a 4X mod) adds a "starfarer" option which reduces growth by a factor of 2 again, and reduces income by 10% (leaving expenses alone).  Similarly the settings.json file includes upkeep and income multipliers one could increase and decrease.

As noted in this thread, the game is actually closer to an table top RPG than a space computer game that can be lost like Stellaris or FTL, for example.  You can suffer setbacks, and even be sent back to square one in terms of wealth, but if you want to continue playing, the game will let you, similar to how a GM will often make players roll up new characters and continue on after a total party kill.
Logged

Chaos Blade

  • Lieutenant
  • **
  • Posts: 74
    • View Profile
Re: A Professional Critique Of Story Points
« Reply #71 on: May 11, 2021, 06:39:37 PM »

Re difficulty in general I was excited to try the game because it looked hard and I like the idea of trying to scrape a living in a hostile environment and slowly work up. But I soon found out that you can't die, there are big shiny ships everywhere just floating around waiting for you to put crew on, you get paid hefty sums for doing literally nothing and truly ludicrous income from building your own space empire in a couple of years, etc. etc. The 'story points' are just another dose of this painful lack of difficulty, which is strange for a game of this kind. It's like it's trying to cater to a general audience. Let's face it, nobody is going to play this game except nerds  ;D

Unfortunately, as with any game, one difficulty doesn't really fit all players.  As it is, Starsector only has two immediately accessible difficulties, easy and normal.  Alex has expressed the opinion that he'd rather see in game switches be available to make the game easier or harder as the player desires.  Things like story points or taking commissions with factions.

I'll note many people told Alex in RC9 the payouts for missions were too low, so Alex boosted them in RC10.  Players were still told him they were too low, so they were boosted in RC14 as well.  So despite your claim, there are people on these forums stating the opposite in terms of difficulty.

On the bright side, Starsector is highly configurable and moddable.  If I'm not experimenting, I'll generally run a spacer start plus iron man.  If you're not aware,  Spacer eliminates the starting income, and replaces it with a debt payed monthly that scales with character level.  It can turned on using a text editor to modify:

Starector/starsectore-core/data/config/settings.json

Change line 216 (at least in my config file):
   "enableSpacerStart":false,
to
   "enableSpacerStart":true,

There are a number of settings in there that can also be changed to make things easier or harder, but is a bit much to go through here.  As a quick example though, one could change     

"storyPointsPerLevel":4,
to
"storyPointsPerLevel":1,

There are also mods aimed specifically at increasing difficulty, such as Ruthless sector, found in the mod section of the forums.

I agree, once you've hit well developed colonies, credits become a non-issue.  Alex I believe is still planning out what the end game enemy or enemies will be that require such vast wealth.  Its one of the reasons colony growth was tuned lower this release.  Although Nexerlin (essentially a 4X mod) adds a "starfarer" option which reduces growth by a factor of 2 again, and reduces income by 10% (leaving expenses alone).  Similarly the settings.json file includes upkeep and income multipliers one could increase and decrease.

As noted in this thread, the game is actually closer to an table top RPG than a space computer game that can be lost like Stellaris or FTL, for example.  You can suffer setbacks, and even be sent back to square one in terms of wealth, but if you want to continue playing, the game will let you, similar to how a GM will often make players roll up new characters and continue on after a total party kill.

On mission payout, the issue is that sometimes you have a good payment, but with the travel time, and cost in fuel and supplies, it ends up being marginal
So it is less than the payout is big or low and more than missions have a consistent issue of not taking in account distance from core when offering rewards
So, the big thing would be a distance modifier.
There are other issues with the general value of items, selling ships being too cheap, compared to the cost of guns and the like, which feels strange, but might make sense in the setting, specially with multi Dmod hulls, but...
Logged

Badger

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 34
    • View Profile
Re: A Professional Critique Of Story Points
« Reply #72 on: May 11, 2021, 11:01:31 PM »

@ Hiruma Kai

Good points. I fully accept that the game is a work in progress without developed end-game content atm and that generally you can't please everyone with difficulty. I still think it's great, and there are lots of mods so nothing major to complain about. I used Starfarer from Nex for the last game and have installed Ruthless Sector and that sounds good. I don't know about the 'Spacer' start because that seems to just front-load some difficulty arbitrarily, which I guess is ok but once you overcome that you're back to a normal start basically which you could have just picked in the first place. I'm going to try nuke passive income sources and it would be nice to make ships less available and more expensive. Guess the latter is easily done.
Logged

SCC

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 4112
    • View Profile
Re: A Professional Critique Of Story Points
« Reply #73 on: May 12, 2021, 02:13:33 AM »

Just from a new player's perspective I largely agree with OP.

I started playing Starsector a week ago and love the game but it's way too easy and 'Storypoints' are almost insulting to the player, just giving you the ability to bypass any screwup for basically no cost. It's like 'Hey, you're an idiot but that's ok, we have you covered with these cheat-points!'. It's completely immersion-breaking and undermines the mechanics that are there removing any necessity to pay attention or think.

Re difficulty in general I was excited to try the game because it looked hard and I like the idea of trying to scrape a living in a hostile environment and slowly work up. But I soon found out that you can't die, there are big shiny ships everywhere just floating around waiting for you to put crew on, you get paid hefty sums for doing literally nothing and truly ludicrous income from building your own space empire in a couple of years, etc. etc. The 'story points' are just another dose of this painful lack of difficulty, which is strange for a game of this kind. It's like it's trying to cater to a general audience. Let's face it, nobody is going to play this game except nerds  ;D

Hope the design direction will go more towards assuming the player isn't a 10 year old. Great game, lot of potential.
I find it somewhat funny that complaints currently are either that the game is too easy, because of story points, or too hard, because of some balance issues and Remnants.

I wonder if Alex is going to change SP costs of various actions, such as having the "retreat without combat" cost increase as your fleet size increases, or bigger or rarer ships requiring more SPs to recover, e.g. ships require 1 SP per 10 DP to recover.

Draba

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 732
    • View Profile
Re: A Professional Critique Of Story Points
« Reply #74 on: May 12, 2021, 05:29:04 AM »

I find it somewhat funny that complaints currently are either that the game is too easy, because of story points, or too hard, because of some balance issues and Remnants.

I wonder if Alex is going to change SP costs of various actions, such as having the "retreat without combat" cost increase as your fleet size increases, or bigger or rarer ships requiring more SPs to recover, e.g. ships require 1 SP per 10 DP to recover.
The economic part of the game is really easy IMO, even for newbies.
Early income you can generate is huge, makes the transition to colonies and infinite money very fast.
1 mid-level bounty payout means months of hazard pay even on the worst planets, paired with the way growth works +-100% hazard is nothing.
The abundance of early cash makes the only hurdle for colonies (ramp-up time) painless.

Get multiple colonies in systems with decent stable locations, close to the core and possibly with a gate for later.
As long as you get alpha admins you'll be swimming in credits even if they have literally no resources, no special items or SP improvements needed.


On the other hand, special fleets with the magical enemies are hard as balls.
I casually rolled in with a fleet that smacked all human bounties into a special tri-tach bounty, lost 2/3rds when the 1 extra ship popped up in the middle of the fight.
Sure, once you know about them there are lots of ways to fight(/cheese) redacted, but they are extremely hard to impossible with some fleet compositions if you do not expect them.


Too easy strategic and occasionally too hard tactical layer roughly matches my experience.
I'd prefer human fleets to be slightly stronger, I enjoy the battles where the opponent uses mostly the same rules/ships you have access to more.
« Last Edit: May 12, 2021, 07:42:38 AM by Draba »
Logged
Pages: 1 ... 3 4 [5] 6